Yesterday Dr. Marcus Eriksen, his expedition partner Joel Paschal, and their land-based support coordinator (and fiancee of Dr. Eriksen) Anna Cummins took the newly built “Junk Raft” on a trial run to Catalina and back. All systems are go, so they’re now scaling up for the big departure on Sunday afternoon, June 1, at 3:00 p.m. from the Long Beach Aquarium. If all goes according to plans, about six weeks later they should land on the Big Island of Hawaii. It’s a straight shot over, mostly along the 25th parallel, just drifting in the westward current which should take them 3-4 knots per hour.

The boat sits on six pontoons which are filled with 15,000 plastic bottles. The Burbank Recycling program donated most of the bottles, though Patagonia tossed in 1000 nalgene bottles they are phasing out due to contaminants in the plastics. If you’re in the L.A. region you should come to the big Bon Voyage Send-off, starting at 1:00 on June 1st at the Aquarium. And you can follow their progress on their blog.

Consider the energy content in the plastics in the oceans. No chemical energy source is wasted by life, ultimately. Just give natural selection a chance and something will evolve to eat the plastic and have a delicious time doing so. In the meantime, we pigs have a problem with our ocean views. Perhaps the rising cost of petroleum will price plastic out of the market?